Saturday, May 17, 2014

Book Review - Three Junes

My boyfriend gifted me with the newest Julia Glass novel, And the Dark Sacred Night. Glass is one of my favorite authors, and when I read the synopsis, I realized this book would have some familiar characters. So I went back and reread Three Junes, the novel that first made me fall in love with this writer.

There are three separate stories here, the "three Junes" the title alludes to, and the main character in each story is connected to the others, sometimes in ways only the reader will ever know. The first June tells the story of Paul McLeod, newly widowed and finding himself in the anonymity of a group tour of Greece. The second June follows his son, Fenno, years later. Fenno is the only character to appear in all three Junes, and he narrates in first person while the other stories are told in limited third. Fenno's June is years after the first and finds him preparing for his father's funeral while reminiscing on the death of a friend from AIDS and the tense atmosphere surrounding the disease in New York City in the 80's. The last June, more years into the future, has Fenno crossing paths with someone his father met in the first June. The fact that neither of them recognize this connection is a bittersweet prize that belong to the reader alone.

This is character driven literary fiction about how we're all connected in ways we may never fully comprehend. For writers in this genre, there is no better "How To."